“To be, or not to be: that is the question:
William Shakespeare, Hamlet
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover’d country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.–Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember’d!”
Sites/Topics covered in this post:
- Paris Catacombs
- Père Lachaise Cemetery
- Street Scenes pictures
Go-Date: Day 127, Wednesday, May 29
Lesson Learned: Don’t tip in France, unless you really, really enjoy the food or service. They already tack 15% onto your bill. I’ve read that tourist really should tip, because the staff appreciate it and will treat their next patrons better, but I don’t buy it.
You score no brownie points by over-tipping. Tip as required, but don’t go overboard. Nobody gives a shit. You aren’t a hero for doing it.
I’ve asked a dozen French people if they tip, and everyone says “No!”. Hell, if its good for the French, its good for me, too.
Welcome to the Catacombs, 6,000,000 Dead Can’t be Wrong
“Something evil’s lurking in the dark
You see a sight that almost stops your heart
You try to scream, But, terror takes the sound
You start to freeze as horror looks you right between your eyes
Darkness falls across the land, the midnight hour is close at hand
Creatures crawl in search of blood, To terrorize the neighborhood
And whosoever shall be found
Must stand and face the hounds of hell
And rot inside a corpse’s shell
No one’s going to save you from the beast about to strike
You’re fighting for your life, inside a thriller tonight,
You hear the door slam
And realize there’s nowhere left to run
You feel the cold hand
And wonder if you’ll ever see the sun
You close your eyes
And hope that this is just imagination
But all the while you hear a creature creeping up behind
And you know you’re out of time”
-Thriller, Michael Jackson (Vincent Price)
“When your time comes to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song, and die like a hero going home.”
Tecumseh
“Death is the solution to all problems. No man – no problem.”
Joseph Stalin
“Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once.”
William Shakespeare
“Suicide is man’s way of telling God, ‘You can’t fire me – I quit.’”
Bill Maher
We all have a dark streak within us. Mine just happens to enjoy dancing to music nobody else can hear, frightening small children, and worrying those in administrative and supervisory roles about what I may do next. Sometimes its even worth the price of admission.
To placate my inner demons Ellen lets me visit places that may not make it onto the dance card of most other people venturing to foreign lands. While in Paris, we decided to visit the Catacombs and the cemetery of Père Lachaise. We found them both highly entertaining and so very different than anything you’ll find back home. These really aren’t off the beaten path, but these venues are a little on the creepy side of town.
About the Catacombs-
243 Steps (It definitely isn’t ADA compliant)
- There are 131 steps to go down
- 112 steps to climb up.
- Why is it different?
Temperature
- The average temperature is 14°C (57°F)
Prohibitions
- No eating or drinking on the site
- Animals are not allowed.
- You must not touch the bones
Specifics
- There are about 300 km (180 miles) of corridors under the city.
- There is a Bunker in the Catacombs built by the German Army during WW2
- The resistance also had a bunker in the Catacombs, 500m from the German bunker
- The Wave, a painting by Hokusai (a copy) is painted down there in a room called La Plage
- The Catacombs are 20 meters (66 feet) below the streets of Paris
Cataphiles
- There is a community of people who like to crawl around the Catacombs. They are called the cataphiles. They also like to go skinny dipping in underground pools found outside the tourist area.
- The fine for being caught in the Catacombs is $65
The Catacombs are an underground ossuarie which hold the remains of more than six million people who might have lived, but definitely died in Paris over the last 1,000 years. Its history began in when a basement wall in a property adjoining a cemetery collapsed under the weight of a mass grave behind it. This was a problem for the property owner as he had the space listed on Air BNB. The cemetery was closed to the public and all intra muros (Latin: “within the [city] walls” burials were forbidden after 1780. The problem of what to do with the remains crowding the city cemeteries was still unresolved. When in the late eighteenth century, major public health problems tied to the city’s cemeteries led to a decision to transfer the remains to an underground internment site.
The authorities wanted an easily accessible site that was, at the time, located outside the city. The abandoned Tombe-Issoire quarries under the plain of Montrouge seemed like the perfect solution. The quarry, which had been in operation since the fifteenth century, but was now abandoned contained a labyrinth of tunnels that extended under the city over approximately 800 hectares (approximately 324 acres). That area that was once out in the sticks is now prime real estate inside the Paris city limits.
The bone brigades began exhuming bodies from 1785 to 1787 beginning with the largest cemetery in Paris, the Saints-Innocents cemetery, which had been closed in 1780 after consecutive use for nearly ten centuries. The tombs, common graves and charnel house were emptied of their bones, which were transported at night (to avoid a PR bru-ha-ha).
The bones were rudely dumped into two quarry wells and then distributed and piled into the galleries by the quarry workers. What a job that would be. It really would be working the grave-yard shift. This gruesome work continued after the French Revolution until 1814, which made it really convenient with all the newly dead headless corpses littering the Paris streets that needed a permanent place to sleep.
This worked out well since in 1840, during urban renovation led by Louis-Philippe and the Haussmannian reconfiguration gutted and rebuilt Paris from 1859 to 1860. Those bones and cemeteries were no longer a problem when they needed to build the Champ Elysee.
Starting in 1809, the Catacombs were opened to the public by appointment. Soon, due to popular demand, the ossuary was opened to everyone without requiring an authorization and now welcomes nearly 550,000 visitors yearly.
With this in mind, it may startle you to know that not only are bones of millions on display under the streets of Paris, you can also buy human bones simply by picking up the phone in your pocket or the laptop on your desk. Now, I don’t know why you would want to, but you can. That’s because the sale, purchase, and trade of most human bones in the United States is largely legal. There are some stipulations. Native American remains are protected under Native American Graves and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), and each state has different provisions about how human remains on the market may be obtained or carried over state lines, but, provided you have the cash, you can order a freshly cleaned human skull or an “antique” skeleton in minutes. (ah, now there’s a real party discussion piece for you when you serve your Caesar Salad to dinner guests in a human skull).
There’s no federal regulation or oversight for such private sales. The online store for a Los Alamitos, California, shop simply called the Bone Room assures buyers, “it is perfectly legal to possess and sell human bones in the United States.” Wow, now there’s a hobby more unique than doing raku pottery.
We found the Catacombs very interesting, though I’m not sure that would be the best adjective I could pick to describe our experience. Ellen will warn you that the stairs are a bit treacherous, and you go round and round down a steep circular staircase which feels more like 500 steps rather than 131. After we finished, the first thing we did was wash our hands with sanitizer. I think you will want to do this as well. One other thing, the guards check your bag on the way out just to make sure you didn’t keep a souvenir from your visit.
Père Lachaise Cemetery
As if we haven’t been around enough dead people, we thought it would be a great idea to visit Père Lachaise Cemetery. It’s both the largest Parisian park and cemetery all wrapped up in one space. You may think that Père Lachaise makes for an odd attraction but is certainly worth a look. We found it serene, beautiful, amazingly unique, and astonishing in how people haven’t evolved much since ancient Egypt as they still want to be impressive and showy to prove how important they are, even after death. Yeah, I need a condo made of stona.
I don’t know why Paris doesn’t have better facts, but they estimate there are from 300,000 to 1,000,000 buried there. Officials say…..”But of course (with a French accent), we know how many dead we have, its 650,000 people…….give or take 300,000. I’ll try that with the IRS next year. It is the final resting place for many famous people though, and we had to go take a look while we were in Paris.
Père Lachaise Cemetery is the resting place of some of the most famous artists, writers and musicians of all time. Among those interred here are Oscar Wilde, Jim Morrison and Chopin, as well as many, many more that we didn’t visit. They are just lucky they died after 1816 or they’d be down in the Catacombs with all the other headless royalty.
To find these graves you have to wander about through a labyrinth of tombstones, trees, granite mausoleums and pathways to find the hidden graves scattered all over this huge green space. I’ve got to figure out who Heloise and Abelard are and why their love affair was so tragic, because they are buried here as well.
Gertrude Stein, Balzac, Proust, and Delacroix, Chopin and others that I really don’t care about are here, and you can look them up and find them here. How do I know this? Because you can use Google Maps to wiggle and giggle around the gravestones like a medieval med student looking for fresh cadavers. It’s a pretty cool place, especially when you get caught in a torrential downpour during your visit like we did (always carry an umbrella in Paris). All in all, I’d do it again, but I’d brink a bottle of bourbon to share with Jim and Oscar on my next visit.